I view with a deep distrust the new class of global capitalist that thinks we must inexorably become "global citizens." The western world didn't come from nowhere. People built it, and their successors should be able to reap the fruits of it, not have to flee to the developing world.
I read an article the other day (it was in Forbes or maybe Business Week). Some American was talking about the investment opportunities in China, and the cultural differences between the countries. He came to free speech, and he basically said: "in the U.S. we can say whatever we want, but in China they think that's silly!" I.e. apologizing for the repressive Chinese communist government just because there is a buck to be made there now. My opinion of such people couldn't be lower.
I'll be chilling here in America, where the bottom 10% live as well as the top 10% do in developing countries.
EDIT: I'm not advocating being ignorant of the world. People should travel, and people should learn what there is to learn from other countries. But I consider it a problem if young Americans have to go abroad because there are no opportunities at home. That's a failure of our social system, and a threat to our communities and our institutions. My father didn't leave Bangladesh just so my daughter would have to go back.
> The western world didn't come from nowhere. People built it, and their successors should be able to reap the fruits of it, not have to flee to the developing world.
If the successors should reap the benefits, then should they also pay for the sins? E.g., continued restitution for slavery (which, while abolished has left deep racial scars in society) and for the genocide and forced displacement of the indigenous population (nobody exactly gave the land back).
Seems unfair to only reap the benefits, and then say the past crimes were committed by other people...
I think he meant that in a purely normative sense, in terms of Westerners having the birthright to a good life while being absolved of the atrocities committed by their ancestors so that the high living standards enjoyed nowadays in the West could be achieved.
> I'll be chilling here in America, where the bottom 10% live as well as the top 10% do in developing countries.
Very true. But it's a perspective many people born and raised in the US lack. (Witness the HN thread a few days ago about the guy who retired at the age of 30, with people slamming him for living at a "poverty-level" income. Which of course means he lives better than 70% of the world's population.)
Long term travel (but not necessarily career-oriented work in foreign lands as this article suggests) is important to gaining that very important perspective.
I see what you're saying, but I think you/rayiner are still missing the point.
There are fresh graduates in America right now that can't find jobs. More clearly, these fresh graduates would be homeless/living in poverty were it not for a little help from their parents, either that or they're holding on to the last shreds of help that our welfare institutions provide. These folks could leave America and find jobs elsewhere that might give them a very, very nice looking income.
I have a friend who was a history major who couldn't find a job right out of college, he went to China with really no clear idea of what he would do there (besides being an 'English tutor', which his sister already living in Shenzen was)... and what do you know, some company decides to hire him to be their spokesman. It turns out businesses in China will pay white/Western-looking people some serious money for gigs like this. He's now in China, with a Chinese wife and it seems to me he's pretty happy with the decision he made. Opportunities like this do exist, and they're actually not that uncommon. Leaving America for a better life is now very much a viable option. Not for everyone, sure, but for some it could be the best decision they ever make.
Rayiner addressed that point directly: first, it's a first-world myth that recent college graduates in the US would be living in anything resembling poverty by world standards (again with the running water, flushing toilets, electricity, inspected produce, guaranteed emergency room health care); second, if your whole argument is that there might be more money abroad for a new grad, well sure, but don't romanticize that opportunity, because it comes at a cost.
> the running water, flushing toilets, electricity, inspected produce, guaranteed emergency room health care
You're still missing the point.
You emphasize guaranteed emergency care, but what about general non-emergency healthcare costs in America? If it's +1 for guaranteed healthcare in America, it's +1 for India when you can actually practically afford some life-saving x-ray or some surgery operation that costs literally 20X as much in America. Electricity is available in counties we're considering -- sure, it goes off intermittently but the results are not extraordinarily catastrophic. Practically speaking, the produce that the masses get is arguably better in a lot of 3rd world countries than it is in America -- less GMO, less carcinogens. I was born and raised in India -- my memory of fruits and vegetables/meat I ate there is SOOO much better than how it is here in America. We had flushing toilets, and we had drinkable water. And I am not even from a wealthy family, just normal middle class. My great-grandma lived to be 101, and my grandma right now in India is 103.
That's because of extreme poverty on the very lower end (also, I always wonder if these age expectancy numbers are taking into account low child mortality rates). If you take care of yourself well in India, you'll be fine.
To be clear, I'm not advocating here that hey if you're in poverty here might as well leave the country, I'm saying if things are not working out spectacularly, you're stuck with a dead-end job (or are having trouble finding employment despite a degree), and you are adventurous/wouldn't mind a big cultural change, you can think about it carefully and plan things out and you'll be fine. Getting out of America for a better life is a very real and viable option in this day for some people.
It's reasonable to assume that in the context of our discussion, the hypothetical young America would probably choose to locate himself in a metro, urban area where there's ample supply of good water.
But, I agree with you India probably isn't the best possible choice here (but still, as others have pointed out, if you have America money (say, 80k), you'll be living there like a king). There's still a lot of other countries besides America that might be a good fit for you.
Where "enjoyable lifestyle" falls somewhere along the diarrhea spectrum from "chronic" to "intractable".
It's unfortunate that people here will think I'm being glib with this comment, since diarrhea kills more people in the developing world every year than cancer does in the US.
In general I agree with your sentiment. But you do make it sound like people in India are dropping like flies because of diarrhea (which I am not sure is the case)
Why does it feel Hacker News is completely blind to the rampant corruption, poverty and rape of New Delhi. I often read about how great it is here, unlike any other website. I suppose not being female helps.
People who have never lived amidst such extreme wealth disparity cannot appreciate what a mindfuck it is. There was an article the other day on HN about how upper class Indians barely regard lower class Indians as human beings. It's not because upper class Indians are bad people. It's because that's the only way to cope living in a country like India where the rich live amongst indescribable poverty.
Its not just New Delhi. Hyperbole, but every woman in India is a potential rape target - All the women I spoke to complained of being touched, physically felt-up, had comments passed on their dress or female anatomy and yet they did nothing about it. What keeps them safe is still a mystery to me. The government sure aint doing much to change the sexist attitudes.
In the USA we take the freedom to wear bikinis and shorts for granted. Hard to see women in India dressing like Americans do.
When that type of terrible thing happens in India (at least these days) it's headline news. Are you seriously suggesting that these things never happen in any developed country?
Ignorance is bliss. Let me spell it out for you. THERE IS NOTHING FUN OR EXCITING ABOUT IT.
As a rule of thumb, when you make hyperbolic statements like this, it becomes very easy to not take you seriously.
>where the bottom 10% live as well as the top 10% do in developing countries.
You clearly have never lived abroad. Money goes further.
I once lived in Cuba, for an internship. I had housing and food provided by my employer, they paid the family $800. I had $500 spending money on top of that.
I lived like a KING. I've never been that rich in my life. People made my food, cleaning my room, cooked for me, did my laundry.
Many thing that I wanted to buy could be had for a fraction of the price. I'm led to understand that this applies across the developing world.
In particular, you can hire PEOPLE for a fraction of the cost you can get interpersonal services here. This has an incredible impact on your real standard of living.
According to Wikpiedia, bottom 10% maxes out at 10,500 in America.
That is POOR, assuming you don't have health care or housing provided.
I couldn't find reliable figures for China, India, Brazil or other countries, but I'm very certain I'd rather be in the top 10% of those countries than the bottom 10% of America.
Anyone have figures for those countries, or experiences being 'well-off' in a poor country?
Much of my family is "top 10% in a developing country." Yes, they can afford people to make their food and clean their houses. That's just because of how poor everyone is, and there is a very negative aspect to that situation as well.*
But if you look at their apartments, personal possessions, etc, their standard of living is comparable to people living in public housing in say the Bronx.
*) My dad once asked one of our servants, a young man maybe 18-19, to go buy a pack of cigarettes. He came back without the cigarettes, telling my dad "I'm sorry, I couldn't buy them--they were [as much as he made in a week or two]." He never asked him to buy cigarettes again... In general, its extremely awkward to have domestic servants in poor countries because those people are actually really poor. Their kids have no opportunities. They'll work until they're dead with no hope of retirement.
Just a note that you wrote your (predictable) "you clearly have never lived abroad" statement ~30 minutes after someone else made the same incorrect observation and was decisively corrected. I often wonder how and why that kind of comment happens here.
Good question, you've made me think. I wouldn't have said it in person (it would have been a question 'have you lived abroad?')
My brain took a statement which I thought was an error, and could have been based on lack of personal experience, then jumped to the conclusion that it was lack of personal experience.
Second, I made a logical error that I wouldn't have made face to face. Developing countries is a very broad term. So I think now there are countries where the quoted sentence is true, and some where is isn't.
In real life, I probably would have clarified which countries the OP had in mind (from subsequent discussions he clearly meant the poorer ones in the group 'developing countries')
It depends on what you consider wealth. In the developed world, having servants is a sign of wealth because labor is expensive. In the developing world, labor is cheap- but plasma TV's certainly are not.
True, I'm probably projecting my view of what's worthwhile, and also highly valued here.
I value personal services far more than most tech items beyond a laptop and phone. And they also cost more here which makes me overvalue them mentally compared to their global value.
I couldn't find reliable figures for China, India, Brazil or other countries, but I'm very certain I'd rather be in the top 10% of those countries than the bottom 10% of America.
What if the system a nation has built cannot adapt to changes and does not leave opportunities for the youth? And what if other nations do? That is one of the main motivating factors of immigration.
You're incredibly ignorant. You should leave the US; not because the rest of the world is necessarily better (yet some parts undoubtedly - in general - are), but because it gives you a broader perspective on your own life and situation.
Just a statement like "where the bottom 10% live as well as the top 10% do in developing countries" really shows you haven't been outside your home town.
I was born in Bangkok, Thailand, lived in Bangladesh for several years, and have traveled fairly extensively in Asia and Europe as a child/young teenager.
Top 10% of Bengalis have 35% of the income, in a country with a purchasing-power parity (PPP) income per capita of $1909. So my guess would be top decile makes about $6-7k/year. This is in a country with zero public services (while someone living on $10k/year in the U.S. has access to public education,* public housing, food stamps, Medicaid, etc). India is substantially better, but at around double the PPP income of Bangladesh, that puts top 10% of Indians probably right around the bottom 10% of Americans.
*) American school spend on average $10k/year per student.
You're incredibly ignorant. And then later, Just a statement like [his statement] really shows you haven't been outside your home town.
Wrong is wrong. I shouldn't need to spell that out, but I obviously do. Whatever point you're hoping to make, you do it an incredible disservice by yoking it to comments like the one I responded to above.
I've lived, studied, and worked abroad, and you definitely get the wanderlust out of your system. The U.S. is amazing and there's a reason everybody wants to come here. The U.S. is actually getting more interesting as regional spots like Austin and Asheville bloom and nationwide America continues to restore its urban city centers.
> Just a statement like "where the bottom 10% live as well as the top 10% do in developing countries" really shows you haven't been outside your home town.
Actually, parent is probably right here quantitatively speaking. At least this is true where I live (China).
>>Just a statement like "where the bottom 10% live as well as the top 10% do in developing countries" really shows you haven't been outside your home town.
The real problem with that statement is that it misrepresents the problem.
The fact that our poor live as well as middle class (or even upper class) in developing countries does not mean anything, because our poor do not compete for the same resources and opportunities as those people. Our poor compete with our rich, and the wider that gap, the worse the situation.
In other words, what really matters is the standard of living of our poor relative to that of our rich.
That is a nonsensical assertion. In exactly what way am I worse off simply because some rich tool has a private jet or a Bugatti Veyron? I still enjoy a standard of living beyond the wildest imaginings of my great grandparents, or, for that matter, for the vast rural poor of Asia.
The problem of wealth disparity in the US is exclusively one of burden sharing: disparity is a problem when those of lesser means are required to make actual sacrifices, like risking bankruptcy for an appendectomy, or sending their kids to classrooms with a 45-1 student/teacher ratio. It's a problem implicating disparity because the Bugatti drivers could, it's often asserted, pick up a greater share of the burden while feeling less of the impact, because the marginal utility of their dollars is less than those of a poor person.
But the problem is not simply that there are rich people, or that they have things you & I don't have. Many of the things rich people have are stupid. But even when they're not, they almost never cost you anything; in fact, because the rich choose to soak themselves with Veblen goods, their extravagant purchases actually help you by driving the economy.
Because the rich people drive up the prices in your local markets. I live in NYC, where the price of a shoebox apartment in Manhattan is sky-high (ignoring rent-controlled places). Why? Because tons of rich people keep apartments here. Had I lived in the middle of nowhere, I could have acres upon acres of land, a spacious, decked-out office, and gigabit internet, for much less than a two-bedroom apartment in NYC. Since everyone has to pay rent, this really affects you, but even if you somehow bunked with others, the everyday expenses such as a cup of coffee are more expensive in NYC. In Moscow and other cities it's even worse.
So yes, living among people who make much more than you obviously depresses your standard of living / cost of living.
>> In exactly what way am I worse off simply because some rich tool has a private jet or a Bugatti Veyron?
Measures of "happiness" and "contentedness" are tightly bound to our environment. Being at the respective top or bottom of a given social order has a meaningful impact on quality of life perceptions. Obviously, some Maslow'esque hierarchy of needs applies here, and no-one in the world is happily starving.
> But even when they're not, they almost never cost you anything; in fact, because the rich choose to soak themselves with Veblen goods, their extravagant purchases actually help you by driving the economy.
That seems to make the implicit assumption that conspicuous consumption is the most effective means of investment for those assets. It may well be the case, but I've never seen it suitably demonstrated.
Veblen goods aren't the most effective means of investment for the greater good, but their exorbitant cost funds the salaries of the craftspeople and engineers and technicians who make them, and the designers and writers who market them.
I'm not saying that buying a Bugatti is a social good; it clearly isn't. I'm just saying that those purchases aren't a drag on the middle class, except to the extent that they represent a missed opportunity for a more-just burden sharing to offset a needless sacrifice by the working class that could realistically be addressed by the rich.
Again the point is: simply sitting around being rich isn't intrinsically harmful to the lower and middle classes.
The bottom 10% in America is not very poor, or even "poor", by world standards. The homeless in America have better health care today than Dwight Eisenhower had when he was President, and, obviously, better health care than the rural poor of China.
Why? Our "poor" have televisions, air conditioning, cars, and homes. There's so much food in America that obesity is a major health issue. This is a profound success and departure from the normal human condition of misery. Please put down the Marxist textbook.
> There's so much food in America that obesity is a major health issue.
Sort of stupid. It actually costs money to eat healthy, which many people can't afford in the states (fresh fruits and vegetables, grocery store far away, no car, just by crap at the convenience store then).
The US doesn't compare well to Europe on quality of life for those not in the middle class. Ya, they can afford some crap, but not what they really need to improve their lot (decent food, decent education, healthcare...). The libertarians don't really get that, and think everything is peachy perfect in the states (except for too much socialism).
If you fry frozen vegetables in a wok with butter or oil and some spices it is delicious, healthy and very, very cheap. Adding beans or mincemeat for protein still leaves it at very cheap. I can't speak to the education system or public transport system in the States but frozen vegetables are surely available in most convenience stores, yeah?
Not really. Also, frozen vegetables aren't very healthy for you; nutrients are lost in the freezing process. They work well enough for starchy veggies, but these are also the ones that make you fat.
Oh well, I hate driving enough that most of the US is permanently off limits. Freezing does destroy some nutrients but generally a lot less than aging does. Picked from your garden beats frozen but frozen generally beats store bought fresh vegetables. Point on the limited selection but getting fat on a vegetarian diet is not easy unless you eat a crapton of stuff starchier than what you get in frozen veg. Potatoes, rice, pasta.
It depends where you buy and what you buy. The poor in developing countries, ironically, get lots of vegetables and can be pretty fit (compared to ours at least). People don't really get fat because they eat too much meat (they can, just not common); its more the sugary and starchy processed foods that do it...and those sell like crack in the developed world.
Of course, one could always hit the gym...if they have enough money (or just move to California and ride a bike everywhere...if they have enough money).
I'm just gonna throw this out there...
"In sum, we estimate that, as of the
beginning of 2011, about 1.46 million U.S.
households with about 2.8 million children
were surviving on $2 or less in income per
person per day in a given month."
That's an interesting stat, but it confusing. Is this a case where people are not taking advantage of the social services offered? $2/day works out to $300 for a family of five.
This reminds me of Medicaid in the US. Something like 20% of the uninsured in America are actually qualified for free healthcare, but don't enroll.
I think the math is a bit wrong. Your money actually doesn't go much farther in Beijing, Bangkok, New Delhi, Kuala Lumpur, etc... Some things might be cheaper (eating out) but many things will be more expensive (cars, iPads, decent clothes). You might be able to hire a driver for 2 or 3000 RMB a month in China, but you still have to buy the car for $4-50,000. At best, its basically a wash, and if you are American, you'll realize how much cheaper most things are back home.
Also, how much do you value clean air and decent schooling for your kids?
I've been out for 7 years now, and I don't regret it. But its not an easy win life style wise.
Don't forget the worse part: salaries are much much lower in third-world nations - at least here in Malaysia - especially after considering currency conversion.
To put this into perspective: median annual salary for software engineers in Malaysia is about RM45,000, which is $15,000 a year. A 'highly-paid' consultant might make about RM150,000 a year - all of $50,000 per annum.
So have US customers (who pay near-US rates) and outsource all your work to skilled local contractors. Added bonus: it scales way beyond your normal 168/hour week cap.
We get a $90K blanket exemption + we can directly deduct whatever we pay for taxes in the country we are working in. So it usually works out to $0 + the expense of filing a tax form. Disclaimer: I am not a tax attorney and this shouldn't be taken as advice.
That's right. Food and gas is cheaper back home (USA) than it is in India, where the cost of living is astronomical vis-a-vis the paycheck drawn by the average Indian.
A per-item price comparison shows vegetables and meat are a lot cheaper (and cleaner) in the US than what I find in India. Metro cities like Mumbai and Bangalore are very expensive when it comes to rental costs, transportation costs and entertainment costs. Have you checked out how much beer/alcohol costs in pubs in Mumbai and Bangalore. Let me tell you, its way more than what we pay in the USA.
Schooling is the most expensive - there is no free public schooling worth sending your kid to. A good school can cost INR. 100,000 per year and even the poorest person I met aspires and scrapes money to be able to afford the astronomical fees required to send their kid to a "private English-medium" school.
How old are those numbers? Lets take one listing for an Apartment (3 bedrooms) in City Centre: Houston, TX is listed as $2,050.00 while Bangalore is $ 559.02. If you check out a property listing site: <http://www.magicbricks.com/propertyDetails/3-BHK-3000-Sq-ft-..., it says INR.60,000 which works out to approximately $1153.84 (around 52 rupees to a dollar). Obviously, numbeo.com has got the most important (housing) numbers wrong.
Numbeo says it is up to date (April, 2013 for Houston data and May 2013, for Bangalore data). I feel that the (Bangalore) housing numbers are reasonably accurate because:
1. Data being crowd-sourced with no real incentive for contributors to lie;
2. Going by personal experience
> If you check out a property listing site: <http://www.magicbricks.com/propertyDetails/3-BHK-3000-Sq-ft-..., it says INR.60,000 which works out to approximately $1153.84 (around 52 rupees to a dollar). Obviously, numbeo.com has got the most important (housing) numbers wrong.
This is a texas sharpshooter argument. It is based on a single data point---which happens to be a 5-floor multi-storey apartment---which is hardly a representative sample of (single floor) 3-BHK apartments in central Bangalore. Claiming that numbeo has got housing numbers wrong by this one data point alone is ridiculous.
This is exaggerated but more or less correct. Depends on the country. You can live in an expat bubble but the downside is that people leave all the time. And you will never be national local but after long enough you can be city local if that makes sense to you. Requires actually acclimating, learning the language and implicit norms etc. I'm not even remotely there yet but living in Shanghai beats living in Ireland.
It was in a sense a generalization to shed light on a larger point in that acclimating to cultures isn't about you, it's about the people who are a part of the culture accepting you.
I also don't want to discourage anyone from leaving their culture to try something new. It's an amazing truly eye opening experience.
I truly don't get the hype about that movie. They definitely got the visuals right, but a lot of it felt "off". Quite a few of the cultural stereotypes were awkwardly over-played too.
Also, Japan is really a different bird when it comes to integration. Not all countries have the same jarring and visceral division between foreigners and local society.
It feels "off" because it's strange for Americans, who grow up in a culture that is made up of immigrants to understand that cultures with centuries of history aren't very accepting of people who are different.
Don't get me wrong, the international community is very accepting, even loving. But when you get to actual nationals, other than a few exceptions, you'll never be truly accepted.
> It feels "off" because it's strange for Americans, who grow up in a culture that is made up of immigrants to understand that cultures with centuries of history aren't very accepting of people who are different.
I lived there for a few years as a teenager, and didn't really have an experience that jived with the general atmosphere depicted in the movie. YMMV, I suppose.
Come now, Japan is by some distance the most xenophobic first world country. If you look Asian, learn to speak Japanese very well, adopt a Japanese name and citizenship you can integrate but those are all necessary conditions.
On the overplaying the foreignness people on their first sojourn in a really foreign country do the tourist goggling all the time. One needs a lot of foreign travel experience to start treating it as just some more different shit.
That's not always true, or maybe I'm just weird. I admit, there's a lot of feeling out of the loop with friends in a different country, speaking a different language, but it's not forever. (And no, I'm not living in one of those American colonies that always seem to form either ;)
More than a few of these arguments are basically, "The money's better there." Which might be true. But emigrating to a place is a big decision and money shouldn't be the factor you use to make it. Depending on where you go, building a new network of friends, learning the language, and acclimating to the culture can be difficult and weigh against your happiness far more than money can offset. And if you lose a year unhappily working in a foreign land just because the money's good, well, that's a year you can't get back.
Instead of career-oriented work abroad, I always suggest that younger people with few responsibilities save up money for a year or two and then take a year or two off to travel instead. You have to commit to a longish period--two weeks in Hawaii or Berlin doesn't count. But the experiences you have, and most importantly the people you meet (including other travelers) will change your perspective permanently, and you'll then be better armed to make a decision on where to build your career.
I agree with you on the difficulty of building your life in a foreign land and the happiness or lack thereof associated with that. I have been thinking a lot about this concept of global living/citizenship. It can open a lot of doors but also leave a lot of loose ends. It sounds sexy but then life becomes complicated as you have two (or more) lives.
Being a big fish in a small pond has its perks. You can go for vacation to developing countries such as Thailand and live like a king. People would be willing to do whatever you want for money. Steak dinners would be $5. Obviously the internet lets you have much richer clients in Western countries subsidizing your lifestyle in developing countries.
But leaving all your family and friends behind to live there might not be for everyone. There was recently a nice article posted about relationships being more valuable to human beings than ambition: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/04/relationsh...
Not to mention, for a guy like me who is Jewish, and whose family would like to see him marry someone Jewish as well, moving to a country where there are very few Jews would just be decreasing my chances of starting a family. That's why it's good to travel for long periods when you're younger.
While that's true -- Jews live everywhere around the world -- it's not like lots of Jews live in places with low income. Realistically I'd probably meet someone in a city:
Everyone should work overseas for a while, even if it's just in other first world countries, I think. Not because you have better opportunities, necessarily (for a certain class of tech startup, Silicon Valley is still the best place...), but for learning about other cultures, etc.
Other than teaching English abroad, how else can recent grads find work abroad? The article really drops the ball on that one and the meager links provided are useless.
I spent nearly two years abroad in undergrad interning abroad, but even then, finding a relevant (not teaching English) full time job in Asia or Europe when you're in North America is extremely hard.
I found a good extremely appropriate post doc in Switzerland, which was completely serendipitous. After I was done in Switzerland, I emailed some manager at Microsoft China out of the blue, and have been in Beijing ever since.
If you have specialized skills, you should be able to find demand for them anywhere. You probably can't start a career here with nothing special in your resume, but you can work for a big corp (e.g. Microsoft) and eventually get transferred to one of their overseas R&D offices. They generally value experience, which might not be something they can get locally.
Yep, I've worked in China and the only way to get to live abroad on a fat expat stipend is to have your existing US or European employer rotate you there. If you try to get a job through local channels you'll be getting a crappy local salary. Do not try to work overseas right out of school-- you are far better off getting solid industry experience and then trying to make the jump. Working abroad is a career-killer too, most of these operations are corporate backwaters.
I'm a LHF (local hired foreigner) in China, and my pay is decent enough. The lack of a package isn't bad if you don't have kids. I also work for a big American corp (but not as an expat), so my prospects are pretty good when I decide to go back. Not exactly a career killer, even if not working at home headquarters always has a disadvantage associated with it.
Yeah but you obviously have a doctorate and commensurate experience to get hired. With respect to local hiring, I'm sure making less than what you'd earn in Seattle or San Jose is ok, but it isn't the high life that the OP was talking about.
The high life is a myth, but I'm not starving. The fact that I can take a taxi to work everyday and not own a car has some savings also.
It would be really hard to get hired out of college into a tech job overseas. But with 3-4 years experience in San Jose, you could transfer to Beijing fairly easily, though as a LHF, not an expat. To get an expat package, you need to be a big shot.
Join the military - we have bases all over the world and chances are you might end up assigned to one.
Join a Federal Agency that does overseas work - State, Intelligence Community, etc.
Join a megacorp with a substantial overseas presence, apply only for jobs that are in countries you want to live in. They'll handle all the work visa nonsense.
The good news is that for most of these, there's lots of bonus pay/subsidized housing involved. Working overseas you can save unbelievable amounts of money.
I spent two summers in Tokyo in an investment bank, although I was too focused on having as much fun as possible to find what non-finance opportunities were available. Also, the prospect of working actual Japanese hours were not very exciting. How was the work-life balance at Ubit?
How is the market in Japan for (foreign) developers? If a recent grad were to follow your footsteps, how difficult would it be to find a decent and relevant job now, compared to 2006?
Even though I worked at a Japanese company, I didn't work Japanese hours. 10am-7pm were my typical hours.
Good developers are in demand everywhere! If you're a developer who has some side-project / open source contribution you can show off, I think finding a job isn't too tough.
I can't really comment on now vs 2006. I had no network back then, so that job was literally the only interesting looking one I could find. Now, I know of lots of good companies.
The cost of living thing is very, very real. Have US customers, but don't fucking live here (I am in NYC to visit).
There are many places where you can have a much better standard of living than the US for the same price - including regular roundtrip airfare to visit your friends and family. There are frequently huge tax advantages, as well.
While true, it's also slightly simplistic. It's more than just market value. There's an American mindset that has its plusses and minuses (like any mindset), but the ability to combine the plusses of the American mindset (entrepreneurship, risk taking, "fake it until you make it") with the plusses of foreign mindsets (in my case: high value on community, stubbornness, practicality) can be a potent mix.
> The quality-of-life/cost-of-living ratio is now much higher elsewhere
I'm reminded of when I lived in NYC, and friends would ask how I could afford it. My answer was that you value different things differently when price informs your choices. My first years in NYC I didn't have cable, didn't have a car, and even used dial-up from home. I didn't mind, though, because there was plenty to do without TV, easy public transit everywhere, and lots of cafes and libraries with network connections.
Similarly, I've found that where I am now a lot of things are cheaper (fruits, vegitables, dining out...medicine and health care) and some are much, much more expensive (cars, gasoline). Again, I let price inform my decision making, and overall I feel much happier and healthier now that I'm eating well, socializing more, and walking places.
> The Jobs Aren’t Coming Back
Put another way: the rest of the world is waking up! Is there really any reason that most programming jobs should be in Silicon Valley? Are people in Brazil, Germany, Malaysia, Kenya, etc. less capable of writing software? On top of this, many places are getting a "second chance" to grow their economies (esp. the service sector) without making the same mistakes as the US (allowing the skilled trade/manufacturing sector to languish).
> It’s time for everyone to grow up and become global citizens
The most shocking thing, for me, on leaving the US was realizing that there is almost no other country in the world where someone would dare consider themselves "educated" or "well cultured" yet have never been somewhere where the people did not speak their language.
Go where they don't speak English. Then you will understand how to communicate.
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Also, for everyone here commenting about China and India, a small suggestion: look at Eastern Europe, Western Asia, Turkey, and the Middle East. The demographics are positively tantalizing for anyone looking for economies about to take off!
#4 is very true. Many americans I know live in a bubble (a very scientific survey, I know). They only get news from the "outside world" filtered by the talking heads on TV (no matter the political persuasion). When I first came to Mexico, everyone thought I'd be kidnapped and ransomed the second I set foot in the country. I've never felt in danger the 4 years I've been here. Sure, there are some places (mainly Juarez and seedy parts of the border towns) that aren't safe at all, but Mexico is so much larger than those places. It might not be for everyone, sure, but living abroad at least temporarily is an experience that is bound to teach you a lot if you take it seriously and stop being a tourist.
Edit: Sorry, replied to the wrong comment, but it still applies somewhat.
In my humble opinion everyone should live at least for a year outside of their own country. It makes people more open, and better. People who always been living in one country tend to be more stubborn, and trying to hold to their beliefs as if it's death or life question.
#4 - Becoming a global citizen is the most important reason. It's good for cultural and personal reasons. If you can solve a problem in another language and culture, you have so much more strength coming home.
I'm an American who's lived in five countries and currently lives in Paris, France with my French wife and our French-American daughter (and if you're curious, I have a blog about how you can move abroad, too: http://www.overseas-exile.com/p/start-here.html). I note that the author says their aren't enough jobs in the US or Europe and I've got an issue with that.
Yes, Europe is also struggling with the world economic issues and part of this is the fiscal/monetary dichotomy of the Euro that they've not worked out, and clinging to austerity to save face (and because it sounds reasonable when the overspending straw man argument is pulled out). However, most of Europe (I tentatively exlude the UK) doesn't have the deep structural problems that the US has.
And I haven't even talked about health care or income inequality or the chipping away at the petrodollar, potentially ending the dollar's status as the default world reserve currency.
The US has deep, deep structural problems and these are long-term problems. Europe has some issues, too, but I don't believe the traditional US advantages of entrepreneurship and limited regulatory environment are enough to offset the EU problems.
The 21st century belongs to Europe and China unless the US stops its political crap, rolls up its sleeves and gets back to being the America we thought it was. There's still a huge potential in the US and it's a great place that I miss in many ways, but it's no longer the land of opportunity (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/why-us-eco...).
I've been privileged to have spent a little bit of time overseas, travelling, on exchange, working and living. I've hit most of North America and Western Europe, throughout the Caribbean, bits of Asia and a fair swath of the Middle East.
I agree that everybody should spend time overseas. It very rarely is a mind-warping experience, but over time it changes your perspective in ways that are very hard to communicate. That slow process of taking textbook facts and walking around in them and making them real is something that has to be experienced to grok.
I recall my wife, who grew up in South Korea and immigrated to the U.S., but who had never been to any other country, the first time we visited the mainland of Italy. The gargantuan magnitude of ancient Rome simply overwhelmed her. Growing up in a very old culture, and then living for years in a young one, she had built up a kind of healthy hubris that was simply shattered walking through thousand year old remains of something as mundane as a public bath or a stadium or a public square. Things which modern Korea has plenty of, but to see that somebody else had come up with the idea and built an empire full of these things centuries before her culture had even come up with their own written language was thoroughly humbling.
She initially felt it diminished where she came from, but over time she was able to assimilate the experience and finally appreciated it, not as a diminishment of her identity, but as an expansion of it.
All that being said, I disagree with this article:
1 - Marketplace value due to oversupply of college grads in the U.S. vs. undersupply elsewhere: In many of the countries I've visited, the number of highly educated barristas, taxi drivers and other low-end service workers is simply overwhelming. I've met people with dual Master's equivalents who spend their work day standing in a costume at the entrance to a parking garage at a department store bowing to cars coming in. Trust me, getting college grads into jobs where a college degree is needed is typically not a problem in most countries (think supply and demand, if this were even trivially true, those jobs would pay astronomical salaries, but even in highly developed economies like Japan, they don't). Unless you just happen to have some specific skill set, and happen to be fluent in the local language, chances are this entire reason simply won't hold true.
2 - Quality of life: True in some still developing, but otherwise nice countries, absolutely false in the developed areas. Moscow, while still so-so, can easily cost more than NYC to live in; 12 years ago you could live in Seoul for about 1/3rd of life in an urban part of the U.S., today it's about the same, a nice meal in Bangkok might cost you more than in U.S.! Caracas now ranks in the top 10 most expensive cities anywhere, likewise Singapore. Fancy paying $8 for a beer, or $20 for a movie ticket? Welcome to Kinshasa and Port Moresby respectively.
Other modern conveniences might similarly cost much more, how about paying twice the U.S. price for an iPad with no app store support for your country. How about Singapore's insane car ownership tax, how about paying $40,000 for a Honda Civic? And oh yeah, gas will cost you. Let's move to Seoul where you have to put a deposit down on an apartment so large you can't even buy the car in the first place.
Let's not forget lax food safety standards, corrupt police, unbelievable pollution...yes I'd like to live in Beijing where every day outside is like smoking a pack of cigarettes.
Before you know it, the thin veneer of pseudo-quality of life familiarness goes away astonishingly quickly when you're squatting over a hole in dirty train station because the camel foot you ate wasn't cooked enough.
3 - The Jobs aren't coming back. Nonsense, it's a pendulum for some jobs and doesn't matter for others. Do you think all the high-end finance jobs are heading for Urumqi? Or that we're suddenly going to start outsourcing local auto-accident lawyers to Dehradun? If anything, the U.S. is shifting lots of outsource jobs back into the states after realizing that outsourcing development, even at cheapo labor rates, often costs more. If the number of Indians moving into my part of the U.S. for high-end work is any kind of thermometer, the jobs are definitely coming back. A commuter bus I take every once in a while completely defies this logic with a majority of the riders educated and Indian!
As China's standard of living is increasing we're seeing the obvious effects, it's not necessarily going to be cheaper to build stuff in China forever going forward. And obviously, moving to an area like that defies #1 and #2 above due to lousy pay and long hours in a job where you can assemble an insignificant part of a device that'll be bought and used thousands of miles from you.
4 - Yeah, broaden your horizons! I don't disagree, but think of it this way, would a New Yorker, struggling in the tough competitive environment of NYC suddenly move to rural Arkansas because he might get a job more easily? No! Why move to another's country's version of the same? I've often been surprised at the places I'd love to move to (and even at the places I wouldn't). But I've got to get real, no matter how cheap the table wine is in Florence, moving there is not going to give me any kind of jobs benefit whatsoever.
Take an ESL teaching job for a year in another country for the exposure? Cool! But don't think it'll substantially distinguish you in the market or give you any other benefit other than a unique life experience.
I read an article the other day (it was in Forbes or maybe Business Week). Some American was talking about the investment opportunities in China, and the cultural differences between the countries. He came to free speech, and he basically said: "in the U.S. we can say whatever we want, but in China they think that's silly!" I.e. apologizing for the repressive Chinese communist government just because there is a buck to be made there now. My opinion of such people couldn't be lower.
The fact is that India and Asia are not pleasant places outside the little bubbles westerners and the local rich people build for themselves. You want to go live in New Delhi? Be my guest: http://www.voyages-photos.fr/images/new-delhi/new-delhi05.jp..., http://www.voyages-photos.fr/images/new-delhi/new-delhi08.jp....
I'll be chilling here in America, where the bottom 10% live as well as the top 10% do in developing countries.
EDIT: I'm not advocating being ignorant of the world. People should travel, and people should learn what there is to learn from other countries. But I consider it a problem if young Americans have to go abroad because there are no opportunities at home. That's a failure of our social system, and a threat to our communities and our institutions. My father didn't leave Bangladesh just so my daughter would have to go back.